Large software systems, for example enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) systems, can be designed to work with a great number of different object types. In a CRM system from SAP AG, for example, there are the object types accounts, contact persons, campaigns, target groups, orders, opportunities, to name a few examples. A user working with instances of these objects may need access to some or all information in the object from time to time.
These and other objects can, however, contain a great deal of different information, and can therefore be very complex. It can be cumbersome or inefficient for the user if the relevant information is not presented where the user expects it to be, perhaps because one or more additional navigation steps are needed to reach the information. In short, users desire to easily find and quickly access the relevant information. Moreover, the information that is relevant varies from user to user. A proper balance should be struck between the information that is automatically presented to the user—whether the information is part of the object or of an associated object—and that to which the user should navigate in further steps.